Page 31 - BusinessWest February 7, 2022

Remote Possibilities
College Internships Turn Pandemic into Learning Experience
By Elizabeth Sears
Internships have always been known to take different shapes and forms, from a student teacher eagerly helping to prepare class-
room activities to the stereotypical unpaid intern making copies and bringing coffee to co-workers while carefully shadowing how the
an internship coordinator at Westfield State University, recalled feelings of uncertainty when the fall 2020 semester approached.
“School was back in session, but it was all virtual ... would internship sites be as receptive to hav-
“I think, actually, students are better able to manage that shift now because their classes are online and they are working more independently.”
ing interns as they were in the past? Usually, we have more places that are willing to have interns than we have interns for, but our fear was that we’d be in the reverse, that we’d have more interns than we have places for,” Layng said.
However, despite the copi- ous amounts of instability in
different jobs at their company work.
Now, a new type of internship has been added
to the mix: a student sitting at home in front of their laptop. For many students, this has become the new normal.
With the onset of the global COVID-19 pan- demic in early 2020, the leaders of internship programs at universities in Western Mass. feared that students would not be able to have as many internship opportunities. George Layng,
many areas of academic life brought on
by the pandemic, internship programs
at colleges in the Western Mass. region
have been running strongly with abun-
dant student success. Layng said the
number of students participating in his internship program has remained steady over the course of the pandemic, even when compared to pre-pandemic years.
“I think, actually, students are better able to
Alan Bloomgarden says students have done well with internship placements during the pandemic, but safety concerns have impacted some experiences.
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